Forgotten: Prologue
Broken and crumbled leaves fall from above in a small willow, tiny bugs and insects riding over the trees crumbly bark. The little girl stands there, her eyes chiseled with guilt, “Mother,” She barely whispers, heartfelt letters filling every open space in the meaning, “I didn’t know.”
The girl’s natured beautiful blue eyes wonder across the roots which dig into the wet, cold ground in the graveyard. Birds speak a whole different language in the tree, looking down at her with dreadful eyes, and nasty expressions. The small girl’s bony, fragile hands snake up the trees bark once more for the third time, her eyes closing as she rests her forehead against the dirty-stick-like-surface. Teardrops of rain fall from the sky, drenching her pure black hair and soggy sandals even more, “I’m sorry.”
The five year old lets go, holding her teddy bear tight as she plops down in the mud. She picks at the green blades of grass, the raindrops running down her soft-pale skin.
“Ruby,” A man says from behind her, the sad little girl truly forgetting he was there, “It’s time to go.”
“But daddy,” She sniffles, “Mommy…”
“Mommy’s gone, sweetheart,” He scoops her up, kissing her cheek softly as the rain soaks them both, “Lets head home before we catch a cold.”
Ruby refuses, shaking her head as she buries her face in her father’s jacket, “I want to stay with mommy.”
The father sighs, walking away anyways as his boots stomp against the floor, “It’s time to go home.”
The little girl nearly bursts into tears, not having enough strength to pull herself from her father’s arms, and unwillingly gets seated in the back-seat of a police car. Ruby’s father is chief of police, her mother was a house mom. Ruby glances out the window, both hands on the glass as she watches that willow tree move past her, her mother’s grave somehow speaking to her as it does so.
'Don’t forget me Rubes. I’ll always be in your heart.'
The toddler looks away, blinking back any emotion, and crosses her arms as they pull into the parking lot of a safe apartment building.
End of chapter
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Good start. But, I have a few corrections:
"Broken and crumbled leaves fall from above in a small willow, tiny bugs and insects riding over the trees crumbly bark."
This should be 'Broken and crumbled leaves fall from a small willow; tiny bugs and insects ride over the tree's crumbly bark.' You use a semi-colon to separate the two clauses.
"The little girl stands there, her eyes chiseled with guilt, “Mother,” She barely whispers,..."
This should be 'The little girl stands there, her eyes chiseled with guilt. "Mother," she barely whispers,...'
"The girl’s natured beautiful blue eyes wonder across..."
I find the first words a little confusing. So, 'The girl's beautiful blue eyes nature wander across...'
"The small girl’s bony, fragile hands snake up the trees bark once more..."
I see that you always forget to put an apostrophe in the word 'trees'. The bark is a part of a tree so the word 'tree' must be in possessive form, and not in plural form.
Overall, it's a good start. Hope these helped.
Halloooo!
)
I loved this prologue! I want to read the rest of it!
It's so ... beautiful... :')
Nicely put together and great use of imagery!
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Ps,Mislady.
Heyho there Pix, Ita here to review as requested.
Let me start off with my overall impression of it: it was fairly good, a tad cliched, but that's just me. Cliche stuff can be great. There weren't any major flaws or inconsistencies, but there are nit-picks I will pick at for the sake of this review and stuff.
The overall impression is there, it's quite melodramatic and poetic, really (not necessarily a bad thing), but it loses it's impact if you peer in at the details.
Firstly, how do 'broken and crumbled leaves' fall in a willow? That makes little sense, actually. Possibly you meant Fall down from a small willow , or something of the sort. How I phrased it, it implies the leaves are falling from the actual tree instead of in it... unless I've missed something.
As for the insects, I never associated insects with 'riding', more like 'crawling' or something. This is your call though, it's a purely linguistic choice. And allow me to point out that you repeat 'crumbling', both for the leaves and the bark. A synonym is called for.
Oh look, a poor little girl is weeping for her mother. Interesting. However, she's introduced as 'the girl' instead of 'a girl', which implies that she's already been introduced somewhere... which didn't happen save in your mind. Once again, your call. Also, how exactly are eyes 'chiseled' with grief? I think they're usually filled with or lined by, but not chiseled. Poetic... but a bust here. Furthermore, how does one 'barely' whisper? Try 'faintly'. And you don't need the capitalized 's' of 'she', there's a comma there. The kid doesn't know something... nice. Foreshadowing. Too bad it's not mentioned whatsoever in the remaining prologue. Well, that'll have to be addressed in Chapter One, I suppose.
'Natured' blue eyes? Really? You could try 'natural', but that would be silly, as it implies she's been using colored contacts or something, which I doubt. Also, instead of 'wonder across the roots', you might want to try 'wander' instead. Secondly, you don't need that comma before 'more'.
Once again, you don't need caps after speech marks. You make this mistake quite often.
Random info dump, what? It's obviously necessary, but all in one go it's not that credible. You could try to somehow distribute the info amongst this chapter and the next.
She doesn't seem all that much of a toddler to me, the dictionary can back me up on this. Try 'child'.
Overall though, it was good!
Hope this helped,
~Ita
Hello! I'm speedy, and I will be reviewing your piece! I'll try and be nit picky as possible seeing it's a small piece and otherwise I won't have much to talk about. Keep in mind this is all just my opinion, I'm not always right.
Ok, so I really do like this as a prologue, it tells us what we need to know, it makes us want to read more and it gives us a little preview of the story to come. Exactly what a prologue should be like. Well done on that.
"Broken and crumbled leaves fall from above in a small willow,"
I'm just being picky but seeing as the image I get from "broken leaves" and "crumbled leaves" are almost the same, therefore it would be better to have just one of those words. Anything that doesn't tell us anything new or give us a new feeling or vision should be cut. Personally I would just have crumbled.
Again, just being picky but this could be better worded as "crumbled leaves fall from a small willow above. I'm not sure that "leaves fall from above IN a small willow really works.
"...her eyes chiseled with guilt,“Mother,” She barely whispers, heartfelt letters filling every open space in the meaning, “I didn’t know.”"
After guilt there should be a new line for her speech, even if it's joined. However I know people learn dialogue from different teachers who say different things so if you've been specifically taught to write it this way ignore me.
"..looking down at her with dreadful eyes, and nasty expressions"
again, kind of giving me the same vision with dreadful eyes and nasty expressions so I would choose just one to use because they are very similar, "dreadful eyes" already makes me think that they have nasty expressions.
Those are just a few little things. Nice piece overall, I can't wait from what kind of story comes from this!
Keep writing!
-SpeedyPencil
Short, sweet, and everything a prologue needs to be. I'm excited to see where this story goes and with a few grammar fixes this will be flawless.
I love this. Great description... it's fully of mystery which makes me want to read more
I love the ending of how you described the apartment of being safe. Amazingly written. I hope you write more! Great job!